Chapter 12
Madeleine could hear voices. Her head was thumping, and her eyelids felt as though they were glued together as she tried to prise them open. The effort was too great, so she stopped trying. She was vaguely aware of a searing pain in her leg.
‘Trust Mum to make it all about her,’ a voice was saying.
‘Poor Nanna didn’t get the burial she deserved at all,’ the other person replied.
‘I can’t believe she took a call at Nanna’s funeral. How can she be so disrespectful after everything Nanna did for us growing up!’ the first voice said.
Was it Lucy? Madeleine wondered.
‘Do you think she can hear us?’ the other person asked worriedly.
It sounded a lot like Faith.
She tried once more to open her eyes, and this time she succeeded. The room shimmered in a blur around her and slowly her daughters came into focus.
‘Mum!’ Faith cried. ‘You’re awake.’
‘Where am I?’ she croaked, her voice coming out thin and raspy.
‘You’re in hospital.’
‘Wh-what happened to me?’ she asked in confusion. Her daughters were sitting on either side of her bed, still wearing the black mourning clothes they had dressed in that morning.
‘You collapsed outside the church during Nanna’s funeral,’ Faith explained.
Lucy took up the story. ‘You left the mass to take a phone call. A passer-by found you unconscious outside the church, so they ran inside and interrupted the funeral mass to ask if anyone knew who you were. So I went outside and that’s when I discovered you passed out in the churchyard.’
A hazy memory of the ground rushing up to meet her and trying, but not being able to stop herself falling, assailed her. Then she remembered the phone call. The disastrous book launch that was taking place today.
‘W-what time is it?’ She strained to get the words out.
‘Almost seven.’
She tried to sit up, but her body just didn’t seem to be able to coordinate itself. ‘I ruined the book launch…’
‘Would you forget about the book launch?’ Lucy snapped. ‘All you care about is your bloody job. You never even asked how Nanna’s funeral went!’
Madeleine sank down into the pillows in frustration. ‘H-how did it go?’
‘It was a lovely mass until you decided to take that phone call, and then all hell broke loose.’
‘I’m sorry…’ Madeleine said, digesting this version of events. ‘I can’t really remember anything about what happened. I recall being on the phone to Jerry and then it all goes blank. Did you … em … did you get to the burial?’
‘We had to call an ambulance. Faith travelled to the hospital with you while I stayed behind at the graveyard for the burial,’ Lucy said bitterly.
‘Well, thank you…’ she mumbled. ‘I’m sorry if what happened overshadowed the funeral.
But the good news is that I’ll be out of your hair soon.
’ Now that the funeral was over, the girls wouldn’t expect her to hang around.
She needed to get back to the office in Dublin and sort out the mess she had left behind.
And besides, she knew her daughters would be glad to get rid of her.
‘Where are you going to go?’ Lucy asked in bewilderment.
‘Well, first I’m going to check myself out of here and then I’m going to head back to Dublin, of course. I’ll obviously need to try and get my car released from car prison, but I’m sure I can work something out…’
The girls exchanged a look.
‘Mum, you won’t be going anywhere,’ Faith said nervously.
‘Why not?’
‘You broke your ankle in the fall. You landed awkwardly on it, fracturing several bones so you’ve just had surgery to piece it back together. The doctors have said you won’t be able to walk properly for weeks, let alone drive,’ Lucy said with a self-satisfied look on her face.
‘What?’ Madeleine cried in disbelief. She pulled back the bedsheets and was startled to see a cast stretching over her foot, around her ankle and a good distance up her shin. So that’s why her leg was so painful.
‘You also have a nasty gash on your head,’ Faith added. ‘You had to get it glued together.’
Madeleine raised her hand and felt around. Beneath her fingers she could feel a padded bandage at the back of her head. She sank back against the pillows and closed her eyes. This was worse than she had thought.
‘Do you either of you have my phone?’
Lucy shook her head despairingly. ‘Obviously her phone is her number-one priority,’ she grumbled to Faith.
‘I picked it up, Mum,’ Faith said gently.
She rummaged around in her handbag before producing it and handing it to her.
Madeleine saw the screen was cracked, and she guessed it too had been damaged in the fall.
She quickly scrolled through her emails and saw an email with the subject ‘Contract Termination’.
What the hell? Then fragments of her phone call with Jerry came back to her. You can kiss goodbye to your career, Madeleine. She felt her chest tighten. The monitors beside her bed started to beep frantically and an alarm sounded.
‘Mum, are you okay?’ Faith wailed.
Lucy stood up and ran into the corridor. ‘Nurse? Nurse?’ she called.
A nurse came running into the room and began checking Madeleine’s vitals. ‘Her blood pressure is very high – did something happen?’ she asked, looking from one sister to the other.
‘She had just woken up but she seemed to be doing okay,’ Faith sobbed. ‘She asked me for her phone and then she went pale and the alarms started to go off.’
‘It’s my job – they’ve terminated my contract,’ Madeleine announced in disbelief. ‘They’ve fired me.’
‘What?’ Lucy cried. ‘They fired you just because you weren’t able to go to the book launch?’
‘Well, no, they fired me because I told them I had it all under control. I didn’t let them know there was an issue until it was too late. That was why I took the phone call during Elizabeth’s funeral mass. I’m guessing that’s why I collapsed…’
‘Okay, I’m taking that phone off you,’ the nurse said, snatching the phone out of Madeleine’s hand and wagging her index finger. ‘Hospital orders. You need to concentrate on getting better.’
Madeleine didn’t even put up a fight. She was too tired, too weary. Maybe it was finally time to accept that she had been defeated.